A GANTRY at the heart of Harrow on the Hill immortalised in a picture by 18th Century landscape painter Inigo Richards could be revamped as tourist spot.

It is thought successive wooden scaffolds, akin to a hangman's gallows, have stood in the same spot on the green in High Street in front of the Kings Head Hotel inn, which has been converted into flats, for 230 years.

Harrow Hill Trust member Judith Mills said: "There has been a gantry on the Hill since the late 18th Century - we know this because there are paintings of it - and it was used as an advertisement for Kings Head Hotel, which has been on the site since 1538.

"The project is to replace the current gantry, which was a makeshift one installed in the 1980s, with another one that looks more like it looked like originally. For the stagecoaches coming from London, the first change of horses used to be at the Kings Head Hotel."

The gibbet is first recorded in the image Entrance To Harrow by John Inigo Richards from 1770 and shows a pub sign hanging from the crossbeam.

The frame appears in several Victorian photographs, including one from the 1860s which shows two stagecoaches parked beneath it and one from 1900 of a meet with horses and dogs gathered around it.

It has taken two years of exhaustive background research to get to the point where plans have been drawn up to dismantle the 1980s version next year and build a much more sympathetic replica of an 18th Century design made of seasoned oak.

Part of the problem was that no-one knew who owned the gantry and the green it stood on: when the hotel was sold in 2001 to a developer to convert the building into flats, no mention of the wooden structure appeared in the property deeds.

And, if as thought no-one replies to a public notice asking for the owner to come forward, Harrow Council will allow the trust to push ahead with a planning application with the blessing of the ex-hotel's current owners, the King Henry Mews management company.

Judith Mills said: "We thought it was an opportunity to do some archaeology. There's probably going to be some kind of community archaeology by Hendon and District Archaeology Society. There's been very little archaeology done on the Hill because it's so old.

"The dig will hopefully solve the question on whether the 1980s version of the gibbet stands on older wooden foundations and whether these could be reused in some way."

Replacing the gantry will cost £20,000 and Mrs Mills said the trust set aside £3,000 for the project two years ago to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

She explained: "We're going for Heritage Lottery funding but they don't fund replicas. Harrow Heritage Trust has given us some funding and we've applied for £10,000 from the Rose Foundation and we should hear back in the next few years if we've got the funding.

"We're looking for more money to produce a leaflet about the Kings Head Hotel and we're going to do some sort of information point a board perhaps because this site is on the Capital Ring walk so we want to make sure people know a little of the history."

Someone else involved in the project is Stephen Woodward, director of Woodward Estate Agents in High Street, Harrow on the Hill, which not only sponsors the green on which the gantry stands but runs the management company for King Henry Mews.

He said: "It's been a long time coming but it's been a technically difficult project to undertake, which Judith has done very well."

He said he had seen a 1970s conveyance, a document of a transfer of property, that did mention the right of the Kings Head Hotel to put signage on the green but believes there is no supporting documentation for a legal basis for this privilege.

Mr Woodward further said a sensible modern interpretation would give that right to the hotel as a business rather than the whoever happens to occupy the former hotel building and so the right would no longer exist since nowadays neither does the company.

He said: "It's an excellent opportunity to bring a feature back to the very heart of Harrow on the Hill. What we have at the moment is a poor imitation so it's a super opportunity to put in a proper structure that really says: 'Yes, you're at the heart of the Hill.'"